Eisenhorn: Xenos does Warhammer 40K action-adventure in the name of the Emperor

The 40K game I’ve always dreamed of is an Inquisitor RPG - a sort of morally dubious Mass Effect in which you’d drift about the universe rooting out threats from the Warp, sniffing the air for the daemonic taint of chaos. This game, though, isn’t that. It’s a smartphone-friendly adaptation of a Black Library novel that doesn’t look to the Emperor for direction so much as Uncharted and Tomb Raider.

Xenos was the first in a trilogy of Eisenhorn books - and the game follows its plot through a patchwork arrangement of combo-based combat, VATS-style slo-mo attacks and stealth segments. Players will pick up party members sourced from the novels, who’ll provide advice and backup.

Though violence tends only to escalate in the games devs Pixel Hero are looking to, Pocket Gamer report that we’ll be given options on how to tackle enemies, and sometimes the chance to avoid fights altogether by taking an alternate path.

Factor in the cameras, turrets, stun gun and temporary invisibility courtesy of mind control, and a picture of pocket Deus Ex begins to emerge. Hopefully it’ll port better than Squeenix’s own attempt to mimic the formula in Deus Ex: The Fall.

Pixel Hero’s last thing was the one-touch shooter Spiral, which people played on their phones and said nice things about. It looked like this: